Resolute Crew Looks To Future

Iowa Leaves Today

Inquiry To Go On During Deployment

NORFOLK — With a focus on the future, the men of the battleship USS Iowa have spent the past few weeks busily preparing for today's sail to the north Atlantic.

Rick, a chief petty officer, took his 7-year-old daughter out for a pre-birthday celebration to make sure his family will have good memories.

Father Jim, a chaplain, comforted and counseled the crew.

Doug, a boatswain's mate second class, made the olive canvas covers for the guns of turret No. 2.

The canvas bloomers of turret No. 2, which contrasted Tuesday with the stark black coverings on the Iowa's other 16-inch guns, were the only difference that marked the site of the April 19 explosions that made the ship famous during training off the coast of Puerto Rico.

The blasts killed 47 men. The investigation, in its seventh week, is continuing with no official target date for completion, Navy officials said.

The Iowa will leave today with three other Norfolk-based ships for training exercises in the northern Atlantic and Baltic Sea. Also participating are 100 midshipmen from 30 universities and colleges.

Norfolk ships include the guided missile cruisers USS Ticonderoga and USS Bainbridge, and the fleet oiler USS Merrimack. The Charleston, S.C.-based guided missile frigate USS Fahrion is the fifth ship in the group.

After the training mission, the Iowa will steam alone to the Mediterranean Sea for a regularly scheduled six-month deployment.

A group of Iowa crewmen, officers and wives met with reporters Tuesday on the pier in the shadow of the huge warship. They refused to look back on the fatal exercise and would not allow their full names to be used. The Navy said that is a precaution against terrorist action directed at the families of those who sail in sometimes-unfriendly seas.

Today's deployment will be like any other, said the men and women, when husbands leave wives to spend anniversaries and children's birthdays alone, when ships painted battleship gray go out to sea, when sailors face the daily threat of death and danger.

"It's the Iowa's mission," said Becky, a Navy wife of 23 years, married to the ship's most senior enlisted man, a master chief petty officer.

The deaths aboard the Iowa have brought the families and crew closer together, she said, and they are looking toward the future.

"You need to, as the captain said, suck it up," said Becky. "Life is for the living."

For the most part, the crew has spent the past few weeks trying to make up for time lost during the distraction of the investigation and in replacing all the ship's stores of powder bags for the 16-inch guns, crew and officers said.

Although the Navy has discounted bad powder as a cause of the explosions, most of last week was spent replacing the powder on board as a precaution.

The new powder charges will go unused until an order halting the firing of the 16-inch guns is removed. The chief of naval operations ordered the moratorium until the investigation into the cause of the explosions is complete.

Turret No. 2 has been cleaned up, some damaged systems removed, bulkheads repaired and generally put into order, said Rick, a chief petty officer in charge of fire control, which means firing the weapons.

The crew of turret No. 2 has been replaced and will be trained in the turret during the deployment, said Lt. Cmdr. Brad Goforth, public affairs officer for the Iowa.

Turret No. 2 would not be used when the moratorium is lifted unless it had undergone extensive repairs, Goforth said.

Despite the explosions, crew members displayed confidence in the guns.

"They're by no means antique like everyone is saying they are," said Rick of the 46-year-old guns. Without them, "we're fully capable of carrying out any mission."

Doug, who in his second tour aboard the Iowa works in the sail locker making and repairing upholstery, was assigned to turret No. 2 during his first tour aboard ship. "I wasn't afraid when I was there. And I wouldn't be afraid to be back."

The moratorium won't last forever, said Rick, adding that he was confident the guns would be returned to the ship's arsenal. "When they do, we'll be back down there firing the trigger and saying, `Let's go.'"

Although few results of the investigation have been released officially or unofficially, local and national media attention in the past few weeks has focused on a Navy criminal inquiry into the insurance policy of a dead crewman and a survivor of the turret explosions, and speculation of possible murder-suicide scenarios.

None of those interviewed was allowed to answer questions about the investigation, but some crew said the publicity surrounding the probe has been viewed as negative and has hurt the crew.

"I wish they had found out what the truth was before they decided to say something," said Father Jim, one of two chaplains among the 1,500-member Iowa crew.